2026-04-05. Nomoyu Daily for Indie Developers (Issue 323)

📰 News

Sequoia’s 15-year veteran: the venture capital carnival will eventually bury most players

Do you think venture capital is a wealth-creation game where everyone can get a share?

Gilly Renan, a 15-year Sequoia GP and top seed investor, uses his legendary track record to show a cruel truth:

Today’s high-valuation carnival will eventually turn into a disaster for the vast majority of players.

Nineteen seed investments produced one decacorn, seven unicorns, and three acquisitions.

That hit rate is an outlier even in venture capital, and his judgment of the industry is even more pointed.

Gilly says bluntly that venture capital, as a business, “should not make money” at its root.

Returns are never distributed evenly. The winners are always a tiny minority.

Over the past decade, nearly 4,000 cybersecurity startups have been created worldwide, with 350 to 400 funded teams added every year.

But in 2024, the global cybersecurity field produced only one unicorn, and in 2025 only two.

Out of 150 new companies, only one or two will ultimately break out.

On one side is a one-in-a-hundred success rate. On the other side are entry valuations that keep rising with the tide.

When he made his first investment in 2012, the post-money valuation was $15 million. Today, projects at the same stage are valued at more than ten times that.

The market is completely out of balance, and the massive amount of capital pouring into the industry will mostly be wasted.

Gilly says that if you are an LP and you spread your money evenly across venture funds in the market, you will not sleep well at night.

In his eyes, venture capital has never been a linear game of applying formulas. It is “the science of exceptions.”

Too many people now treat the 2021 bubble as normal and past growth models as scripture.

But all rules mean very little in front of truly great companies.

He saw Sierra record zero sales for two consecutive quarters. Everyone thought the project was dead, but after the founder adjusted direction, it won $12 million in new orders within 12 months and then kept accelerating.

He also saw Island enter the enterprise browser market in 2019, a category almost no one believed in. Today it is a $5 billion unicorn competing directly with Google and Microsoft.

The rapid growth of great companies is written into their DNA. Once they start running, they rarely stop unless an extreme external event appears.

Even more counterintuitively, Gilly says that selfishness and greed are good qualities in early-stage investing.

This is not moral weakness. It is a necessary trait for survival in a market with asymmetric probabilities.

He never “babysits founders.” If you dare entrust the information security of a country’s core financial institutions to this founder, then you should trust that founder to manage the money in the account.

Today’s venture capital world has too many people blinded by the bubble, mistaking luck for ability and exceptions for the norm.

But market laws never disappear. After the carnival, only a very small number of people will still be standing, and the vast majority will ultimately pay for their herd mentality.

Venture capital has never been a business where everyone wins. It only rewards those who see the essence, dare to go against consensus, and can capture exceptions.

🖥️ Software

Forte

Forte is a strength training tracking and analysis app that provides growth scores, plateau detection, and recovery insights for workout review.

Bolty

Bolty is an adaptive running training app that connects to Strava or Garmin and adjusts plans based on weekly performance.

Moob

Moob is a hybrid social media app that combines dynamic topic interaction with subscription verification to reduce bots.

Lift App

Lift App is a multimodal weightlifting analysis app that combines visual tracking with watch sensors to generate training metrics.

TXT阅读器

TXT阅读器 is an offline reading app that supports Wi-Fi file transfer and provides font, line spacing, and page-turning modes.

FocusOn

FocusOn is an Android self-control app that blocks short videos and provides strict study timers and usage tracking.

🎮 Games

The Shattered Realms

The Shattered Realms is a browser-based ARPG inspired by Diablo-style gameplay, with a hidden corruption mechanic.

shopst4r

shopst4r is a shop management mini-game where players decorate a store, sell clothes, and experience a lightweight progression loop.

✍️ Notes

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